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Articles by Adam Wright

Adam has been a professional meteorologist and surf forecaster since 1999 and has worked for many of the popular surf sites including Transworld SURF, Surfline, Wavewatch, and FuelTV. Currently he is the Chief Forecaster for Solspot.com and is responsible for letting us know when we should ditch the computers for either a quick session or epic trip.

Monday starts to see a few more rideable waves as new long-period SSW swell gradually fills in through the day. Don’t expect a fast start in the morning…but we will have some larger sets sneaking in by the end of the day.

Look for mostly small, but rideable, waves showing at the S-SSW facing spots on Sunday. Conditions will be clean with a touch of light texture at a few of the really wind sensitive spots. Overall it will be a decent day for cruising on a bigger board and/or taking the family to the beach.

Our mix of Southern Hemi swells will fade slowly over the weekend. We can still expect rideable, even fun surf for the better exposed spots, but we will need to keep a close eye on both the tides and the winds in order to score the best quality surf.

We have a new Southern Hemi swell in the water this evening that will hold through Friday and over the upcoming weekend. It isn’t a huge swell, but it has a nice swell direction and will work alongside some background energy to keep most of our summer spots fairly playful. Further out we are looking at a mix of new South Pacific energy moving up our way around the middle of the month. This new swell will hit with some very long-period forerunners early next week and then start to peak by mid-week. That isn’t all we have going on either…the tropics have come roaring back to life and have Odile (pronounced ‘Oh-Deal’) who is currently forecast to become a strong hurricane while tracking toward Baja, and eventually the Socal SE swell window. Close behind is tropical depression 16E who formed this morning and looks like it may become TS Polo before the weekend. All this new tropical activity is already starting to show some swell for Socal in the forecast models but plan on keeping an eye on Odile and TD-16E as we move through the weekend to see how it is really going to play out. Will Odile be another Hurricane Marie…or a Norbert? Check the full forecast for the details.

Clean conditions and a new bump of SSW swell will help keep our surf playful on Thursday. We can expect mostly light winds and lower tides as we start the day…new SSW energy will be filling in as well. Look for slower shape and a bit more texture as the tides and winds increase around midday.

The Southern Hemi continues to keep Mainland Mexico and Central America in decent sized waves for the next several days. Currently we are just winding down from a bigger shot of SW swell that hit late last week and held through the weekend. The trailing elements of that swell will keep the surf rolling through as we move through the middle of the week, finally backing all the way down by the weekend. Before the lack of swell has a chance to even settle a little bit we will have two new South Pacific swells pushing wave heights right back up into the well overhead+ range…and if that wasn’t enough we also have another tropical system spinning to life just off the coast of Central Mainland Mexico that has the potential to spread around some stacked up local tropical energy as we head into the weekend, helping some areas see healthy sized, but questionable shaped surf for the second part of the week. This tropical system is forecast to move away from land (at this point), but you will still want to keep an eye on it, just in case it decides to swing back toward Mainland Mex.

Wednesday will be a pretty decent surf day. The mix of S-SSW swells will continue to push in some fun, but occasionally inconsistent waves while local winds stay light/variable to light offshore for the morning. Even the tides, which had been pretty boggy in the morning, will speed up a bit as the peak of the high tide pushes closer to lunchtime.

The South Pacific has been pretty active lately…sending out the swell we had over last weekend and a number of overlapping shots of S-SSW swell that will be arriving over the next several days. If that wasn’t enough it also has another, fairly strong storm, just moving into the more open waters SE of New Zealand that will be setting up a decent long-period shot of SSW-SW energy for right around the middle of September. That isn’t all we have moving around in the forecast either…we are starting to see some better looking activity in the NPAC, which isn’t really a swell maker, but it is a good indicator that the storm track is beginning to come alive in the Northern Hemi. We also have a couple of new tropical teasers, ones that could end up being our next ‘named storm’ at some point later this week. The super long-range charts aren’t quite as interesting, but I have a feeling that we will see some better storm action begin to show on those as we continue to push further into early fall.